We look with the eyes of the ancestors

Before Mindscape there was Wilderness . In the unpublished first volume of a projected trilogy, Andrea Hairston created the future world she describes in Mindscape and the people who inhabit it. That material forms the backstory to the present work, and other characters from the first book are represented by chapter-heading epigraphs. They include Lawanda Kitt's equally Ebonic sister, Geraldine, and an Ouagadougouan philosopher of the past, Vera Xa Lalafia. Their writings, imagined by Hairston, constitute the cultural ethos of this fictional world and add up to Hairston's personal credo. Here's a sample:

"The stories we tell, tell us."

-- Geraldine Kitt, Junk Bonds of the Mind

"You see what you think you see. You find what you look for. If you can't imagine it, it won't happen for you. Imagine the impossible, imagine the spirit of your enemies, imagine miracles, imagine the last moment of your life, imagine eternity. Imagine what you can't imagine."

-- Vera Xa Lalafia, Healer Cosmology, The Final Lessons

"We have to time travel. Change the past with the actions we take now. Rehearse the future. Live each moment like it's forever." -- Celestina Xa Irawo, Preamble to the Interzonal Peace Treaty

"If everybody is the same, nobody is anything."

-- Vera Xa Lalafia, Healer Cosmology, The Final Lessons

""Survival of the fittest' be the sort of raunchy, take-no-prisoners metaphor that folk throw 'round to make the universe seem like some sorta competitive meritocracy where the best and brightest get all the props and jacked-up failures get dusted (it's they own fault too). What universe is this? Darwin oughta be hollerin' in his grave."

-- Geraldine Kitt, Junk Bonds of the Mind

"In a world of monsters and everyday horror, you want to give a card-carrying scumbag a medal for just being a decent guy once in his life. I suggest waiting until he at least makes it a habit."

-- Tadeshi Mifune, Surviving the Future, Last Minute Notes

"No meaning without experience, no future in advance of living it, no absolute, eternal truth revealed either by God or mathematical logic. The infinite cannot be reduced to a finite algorithm, poetic fantasy, or prophetic Vision. The map of the Universe is the Universe."

-- Vera Xa Lalafia, Healer Cosmology, The Final Lessons

"We are not a chosen people nor have we been abandoned, we are just unfinished. Past glory inspires us, yet nothing works the imagination like terror, except perhaps hope."

-- Celestina Xa Irawo, Preamble to the Interzonal Peace Treaty

"You understand the truth you grasp but not the truth that grasps you."

-- Vera Xa Lalafia, Healer Cosmology, The Final Lessons

"We done let the poetic spirit in folk languish, like bein' human mean togglin' a damn switch steada imaginin' yourself 'cross spacetime and back. ... The square root of bullshit is bullshit."

-- Geraldine Kitt, Junk Bonds of the Mind

"Anything that we are absolutely certain of doesn't matter and everything that truly matters is uncertain."

-- Vera Xa Lalafia, Healer Cosmology, The Final Lessons

"People be past masters at imaginin' the end of the world. . . doom and gloom in the twilight of the Gods--but folk're hard put to imagine a new day where we get on with each other, where we tear it up but keep it real. Why is that? Is an ole question, but I gotta keep askin'."

-- Geraldine Kitt, Junk Bonds of the Mind

"There aren't singular atoms, lonely souls, or Final Lessons. You're never done. Everything stretches beyond you. Who knows what will be true tomorrow? We look with the eyes of the ancestors into the faces of our children."

-- Vera Xa Lalafia, Healer Cosmology, The Final Lessons

The Valley Advocate, March 9, 2006